ABOARD THE USS JOHN C. STENNIS, (AP) -- American warplanes screamed off two aircraft carriers Tuesday as the U.S. Navy staged its largest show of force in the Persian Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, launching a mammoth exercise meant as a message to the Iranians.

The maneuvers with 15 warships and more than 100 aircraft were sure to heighten tensions with Iran, which has frequently condemned the U.S. military presence off its coast and is in a faceoff with the West over its nuclear program and its capture of a British naval team.

While they would not say when the war games were planned, U.S. commanders insisted the exercises were not a direct response to Friday's seizure of the 15 British sailors and marines, but they also made clear that the flexing of the Navy's military might was intended as a warning.

"If there is strong presence, then it sends a clear message that you better be careful about trying to intimidate others," said Capt. Bradley Johanson, commander of the Stennis.

"Iran has adopted a very escalatory posture with the things that they have done," he added.

The exercises began four days after Iranian forces detained the 15 Britons for allegedly being in Iranian territorial waters near the northern end of the Gulf. U.S. and British officials insist the team was properly searching cargo vessels inside Iraqi waters.

F/A-18 fighter jets roared off the Stennis' flight deck all day, mounting a dozen rapid-fire training sorties against imaginary enemy ships and aircraft. A second task force with the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower also took part in the drills.

"These maneuvers demonstrate our flexibility and capability to respond to threats to maritime security," said Navy Lt. John Perkins, 32, of Louisville, Ky., as the Stennis cruised...

F/A-18 fighter jets roared off the Stennis' flight deck all day, mounting a dozen rapid-fire training sorties against imaginary enemy ships and aircraft. A second task force with the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower also took part in the drills.

An entire navy can't and won't budge the Iranians. Road side bombs have claimed the will of our Congress.

Iraq and Iran are two entirely different military equations.

Iraq is ours to protect and feed. We have thousands of troops there. We conquered it, and are trying to make it into a viable modern nations. Rightly or wrongly - that is our mission now.

Iran is not ours to protect and feed. We can launch devastating destruction upon that nation almost at will. Roadside bombs are not in the equation. Our Navy can sink the entire Iranian Navy in a matter of days. Our Air Force and inflict pain on the Iranian infrastructure that will paralyze the nation in a matter of weeks.

Everyone else is crashing on zarf for saying it, but YOU have nailed the true villain to the tree: a gutless Congress.

In point of fact, we have the most powerful military force and the most admirable troops on the planet...

BUT...

...all of that means exactly ZERO if Congress won't back them up.

Unless our Congress acts like the legislative branch of a true superpower, we are not, in fact, a superpower. We are nothing more than the paper tiger that Bejing has always accused us of being.

That does not slander our men and women in uniform, nor does it discount the power of our implements of war.

It simply emphasizes that our superpower status relies upon these three supports: manpower, technological power, and political power.

Neutralize any one of those supports and we cease to be a superpower.

Because our Congress is the dominant body through which our national political power is implemented, the "political power" support for our superpower status is, arguably, neutralized.

Friends, we've got a whole lot of voting to do to fix this, and there's no easy way out, nor is there any short-term solution. We're a team in a rebuilding phase, and there will likely be some distasteful losses before we get back to superpower condition, again.

That's just the way it is.

I pray that each of you is doing the most you can to be part of the solution.

35
posted on 03/27/2007 1:15:55 PM PDT
by HKMk23
(Total domination over all kingdoms under heaven will be given to the saints of YHVH. -- Daniel 7:27)

The maneuvers with 15 warships and more than 100 aircraft were sure to heighten tensions with Iran, which has frequently condemned the U.S. military presence off its coast and is in a faceoff with the West over its nuclear program and its capture of a British naval team.

Is this supposed to be news or "analysis"?

Either way, it is nonsense. The authors are reading the tired old "Blame America First" script that the news media has followed since the start of the Cold War.

Capturing 15 British sailors and marines heightened tensions in the region, which is undoubtedly why the Iranians did it.

Yeah, I was there. Operation Earnest Will--reflagging foreign tankers and daring the Iranians to come out and play. We shot up some oil rigs with five inch 54's and we dropped a 500 lb bomb down the smoke of an Iranian frigate.

It's all rigged. It's a chinese finger trap. The harder you pull the tighter it gets.

Yes. I know.

And the government blew up the WTC towers, in complicity with the Zionists. And wWe've never REALLY been to the moon. And there's a huge hole at the North Pole that leads down into the center of the Earth.

Sorry. No sale. I'm fresh out of foil.

48
posted on 03/27/2007 2:16:15 PM PDT
by HKMk23
(Total domination over all kingdoms under heaven will be given to the saints of YHVH. -- Daniel 7:27)

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